Washington Blade - March 27, 2009
Peter Rosenstein

Mayor Adrian Fenty ran on a platform to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He kept his promise to hold a citywide summit, which took place on April 4, 2007. The mayor, some Council members, and leaders of the city's health department met with consumers and groups from across the city. Attendees included Whitman-Walker Clinic, Us Helping US, AIDS Fights Back, and numerous small and large health care providers, activist groups and consumers with a real interest in working together to combat this epidemic. That day the mayor announced a new assault on HIV/AIDS in the District.

Many good ideas were discussed at that daylong meeting. People worked in small groups and shared ideas and recommendations. It was a great start to moving forward and I had hoped that the mayor would follow through on his commitment to continue to bring everyone together to fight this epidemic until we conquer it.

Today, I have to question what has happened since the summit. Two years later we have a report confirming what we already knew: There is an HIV/AIDS crisis in our city. I agree that this report may now enable us to direct our resources in a more targeted way to the people who appear to be most susceptible to getting HIV/AIDS. But the reality is that we already knew who these people were and some of the reasons why they are either getting or transmitting HIV/AIDS.

We clearly have not been able to reach everyone to get them to practice safe sex or to understand what contracting HIV/AIDS will mean for the rest of their lives.

AND WE CLEARLY haven't managed to convince everyone - gay, straight, black, white, Latino, Asian, young and old, that you need to be tested. One way for our political leaders to dramatically bring this information to the people is by having themselves and their families tested publicly. Why not plan now for the mayor, every member of the Council, along with the adults in their families, and the staff at the Wilson Building, and at other city agencies, to get tested on Freedom Plaza, or at numerous sites in all wards, on National Testing Day, June 27. By that time this report will be out of the news and we will need a continuing way to keep this epidemic in the public eye.

The health department should work with the public schools to immediately develop educational programs aimed at our youth and then schedule those programs to be presented at school-wide events in every middle and high school in the District. They should work with the mayor and Council members so that each program will have at least one of them in attendance. We need to present programs in our elementary schools as well, but those programs may have to be a little different. The health department and school system should work with groups like MetroTeen AIDS to develop all the programs.

USING VARIATIONS OF those programs, we need to present them in prisons and at every recreation center and community center where people congregate. The health department should be working with each ANC in the District to develop programs for their community. And we need to enlist the faith community in this effort.

Some may say that community meetings won't reach the people who need to be reached. But everyone in every community needs to be reached and the more we continue to talk about HIV/AIDS, the more we'll reach more people.

I urge the Council to hold monthly oversight hearings to make public how many programs have been presented and how many people have been tested at clinics, through the health department, and at the city's own Health Care Alliance. Bring in the District's medical groups and hospitals and find out what they are doing on a regular basis to combat HIV/AIDS.

We know that if you find out that you have HIV/AIDS, it can sometimes be treated as a chronic disease. But the cost of that to our health care system is astronomical. So if we are ever to keep people healthy and get health care costs under control, we need to prevent new cases. We need to focus on this every day and that focus has to start at the top. Let's stop being surprised with each new report and begin to fight!

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